dry throat

It's rather amusing how I manage to be calm and collected in the face of Swine Flu and yet every little dry and tickly throat or sneeze sends me into a spiral of thoughts that I must be catching Swine Flu! and what would I do if I did!  I am not ashamed to admit that I have even checked my temperature a couple of times!!

 

Still, it just goes to show just how pervasive this thing is even if I don't know anyone who has been infected (to my knowledge!!) and yet I still believe that, other than good hygiene, there isn't really much we can do to stop the advance of this particular Flu - the antiviral medication just reduces the symptoms and possibly reduces the length of the illness by one day.  It doesn't actually cure it; and the vaccine....?  Not available yet!

 

There has been some talk in this hospital of redeploying staff in the event of a shortage of clinical staff if they all go down with Swine Flu, so...I could find myself on the wards yet if the worse comes to the worse and I am needed to feed patients or make the beds!  This is quite probably an over-reaction on the part of management, but I can still admire their forethought whilst still hoping that it doesn't happen!

At the moment though, I am Flu free and I intend to stay that way!!  ;-)

A surfeit of information

is what I had today! I am in the process of applying for a Hearing Dog for the Deaf and as part of that I was invited to an “information day” at the centre in Buckinghamshire.

This was an opportunity for applicants to see what the charity is all about and to see how the dogs behave, where they are trained. And more importantly, I think, to hear what the staff have to say and what a current Hearing Dog owner thinks of having a dog.

The website for the charity doesn’t actually give travel directions – probably to ensure the safety of the dogs - so I had to rely on a map and a rough idea of where it was. So, the closer I got the more worried I was that I had missed it altogether when I suddenly saw a road sign that said “Hearing Dogs” – aha!!

We were given a demonstration of how the dog works for us – including how to tell us that the alarm clock has gone off….

One of the best bits (and there were many) was probably the talk given by Hearing Dog owner David (dog was called Mitchell) that really opened our eyes to the responsibilities and the joys of owning a Hearing Dog. The funniest thing that he said was that when he first had the dog he was approached by someone who asked what a Hearing Dog did and he was ever so tempted to say that first thing in the morning the dog goes and listens to the radio and then comes and tells me what the news is!!!

Anyway – we certainly had a lot of information to take in and I still had a dozen questions at the end of the whole process!! But at the end of the day I came away feeling that I definitely, positively, absolutely would like to have a Hearing Dog.

Cycling holidays

I can't remember whether or not I've already mentioned this, but in August Mum and I are off on a cycling holiday in Suffolk.

Naturally this has meant a great deal of preparation - making sure that my bike was fit for purpose, doing a few bike rides to get myself prepared and buying some panniers. (after a great deal of research and reading other people's reviews I eventually settled on Arkel - a Canadian firm that sell very robust panniers).

We've also done most of the travel preparation, i.e. booked the Bed and Breakfasts and roughly planned our route; although I still need to do a few more bike rides, but the weather has been putting me off lately!

Anyway, the main purpose of this particular post is to say that we were getting a bit worried that Mum wouldn't even have a bike to ride on! Clearly, the one requirement of a cycling holiday is that you have a bicycle!! Mum had applied to get some money through the bike to work scheme; only it was taking rather longer than expected to arrive.

The voucher finally arrived yesterday and so Mum went and got her bike and after a few hiccups with the saddle and the gears, took it out on a short ride today. Mum's first ride on her lovely new land rover bike (which is purple!) and what does she do? She falls off!! Would you believe that she was stationary too!!! (sorry Mum, this was too good to keep quiet!).

Mum tells me that she overbalanced a little and when she went to put her foot down the ground sloped away a little and so she just missed altogether and fell over! Ending up with a muddy brake lever and a bruised knee - sending kisses your way, but you really shouldn't fall off your bike!